Should you call me Doctor, or not?

 

When you introduce someone, courtesy calls for giving their title. Sue Fox says in Chapter 5 (Meeting and Greeting, on page 76) of her book on Business Etiquette for Dummies, 2nd edition, 2008 page 76:

“If you know that the woman is a physician, a PhD, or a military officer, use the appropriate title.”

 

But that’s not what Joseph Epstein said in a nasty Walls Street Journal op-ed article on December 11, 2020 titled Is there a Doctor in the White House? Not if you need an M.D. He began by whining:

“Madame First Lady - Mrs. Biden – Jill - kiddo: a bit of advice on what may seem like a small but I think is a not unimportant matter. Any chance you might drop the ‘Dr.’ before your name? ‘Dr. Jill Biden’ sounds and feels fraudulent, not to say a touch comic. Your degree is, I believe, an Ed.D., a doctor of education, earned at the University of Delaware through a dissertation with the unpromising title ‘Student Retention at the Community College Level: Meeting Students’ Needs.’ A wise man once said that no one should call himself ‘Dr.’ unless he has delivered a child. Think about it, Dr. Jill, and forthwith drop the doc.”

 

Quite properly there was lots of negative feedback for Mr. Epstein. At Wonkette on December 12, 2020 there is an article by Robyn Pennacchia titled WSJ guy takes brave stand against Dr. Jill Biden calling herself Dr. Jill Biden. At NPR on December 13, 2020 there is another article by Rachel Treisman titled Op-Ed urging Jill Biden to drop the ‘Dr.’ sparks outrage online. And at CNN Opinion on December 14, 2020 there is yet another article by Kara Alaimo titled Attack on Jill Biden’s ‘Dr.” title is no surprise for women scholars -- and proof she needs to use it.

 

Taylor Swift’s new song, Marjorie, says to: “Never be so clever you forget to be kind.”

 

Mr. Epstein has written so much previously that we can easily use his own words to refute his claim about needing to deliver a baby before you can be called a Doctor. On page 38 of his 2002 book, Snobbery, he said:

 “Within each of the professions – medicine, law, clergy, engineering – there was a hierarchy, and even a hierarchy within each element of the hierarchy. In medicine an M.D. was above an osteopath, an osteopath above a dentist, a dentist perhaps above a veterinarian, a veterinarian above a chiropractor, a chiropractor tied in a panting dead heat with a podiatrist.”

 

So the medical hierarchy goes:

Medical Doctor (MD)

Doctor of Osteopathic Medicine (DO)

Dentist – Doctor of Dental Surgery (DDS)

Veterinarian - Doctor of Veterinary Medicine (DVM)

Chiropractor - Doctor of Chiropractic (DC)

Podiatrist - Doctor of Podiatric Medicine (DPM)

 

You wouldn’t expect a dentist, vet, chiropractor, or podiatrist to deliver a baby - but you still would call them a “Dr.”

 

Although Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) is the best known non-medical title containing doctor, there are at least a half dozen others:

Doctor of Arts (D.A.)

Doctor of Divinity (D.D.)

Doctor of Education (Ed.D.)

Doctor of Engineering (Eng.D.)

Juris Doctor (J.D.)

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.)

Doctor of Science (Sc.D.)

 

Mr. Epstein clearly is suffering from a case of envy. In 2003 he wrote a book on it titled Envy (in the Seven Deadly Sins series). On page 12 he referred to the psychoanalyst Melanie Klein as Dr. Klein, which is hilariously overblown. Harriet Pass Freidenreich’s 2002 book Female, Jewish, Educated (the lives of Central European university women) says to the contrary on page 87:

“Although some woman psychoanalysts, including Anna Freud and Melanie Reizes Klein, did not have university degrees, most held doctorates in medicine.”    

 

How many words per sentence are there in U.S. presidential inauguration speeches?

 

That’s a question I never asked. But there is a recent article by N. L. Tsizhmovska and L. M. Martyushev (from the Ural Federal University in Russia) titled Analysis of Sentence Lengths in Public Speaking which answers it. That article appeared in an American Institute of Physics publication titled The VII International Young Researchers’ Conference – Physics, Technology, Innovations (PTI-2000).

They looked at all 58 speeches from 1789 to 2017. From 1789 to 1809 the mean (average) sentence length in a speech was about 50 words, while from 1997 to 2017 it had dropped to just about 20 words. It dropped linearly, as did the median. They also concluded that sentence lengths obeyed a Weibull distribution. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The straight line they showed in their Figure 1 is plotted above. Their text says the linear regression equation is Mean Length = 287.6 – 0.14*Year, but that is a different line about 7 words lower in 1900. For 2020 an average length of 14 words is predicted. The decrease in lengths is so slow that it can only be detected by analyzing over a very long time.  

 

Weasel words from the Idaho Freedom Foundation - after it was revealed they and their board members got government PPP loans

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What happens when how an organization behaves contradicts their previously stated beliefs? Under the What We Believe heading on the About web page for the Idaho Freedom Foundation (IFF) they said:

“The Idaho Freedom Foundation exists to advance conservative principles - limited government, free markets and self-reliance…”

 

On December 2, 2020 their Facebook page issued the following preemptive statement:

“Later this afternoon, the Idaho Statesman will publish a story about the Idaho Freedom Foundation receiving money through the Paycheck Protection Program. Without a doubt, this coming hit piece will seek to smear IFF's good name and our vitally important work. Here is IFF President Wayne Hoffman’s statement about this fake controversy:

‘The answer is obvious. The government shut down Idaho’s economy, Idaho businesses and therefore the donors who we depend on to generously support our work. Meanwhile, we also knew that pro-socialist groups would have no problem whatever accepting all the money they could from the government. We decided it only made sense to do the same. That’s not our preference, of course, but the actions of government left us little choice.’ “

On December 3, 2020 there is an article by James Dawson at Boise State Public Radio titled Idaho Freedom Foundation, board members, received millions in federal pandemic loans. It indicated that in April the IFF received $129,883. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It also indicated that five members of the eight on their Board of Directors (who I’ll call polecats) also received loans for their businesses totalling over $2,000,000. In decreasing order those are: Dar Symms (Symms Fruit Ranch) nearly $1,400,000; Bryan Smith (Smith Driscoll and Associates: $133,000) and (Medical Recovery Services: $72,200); Doyle Beck (BECO, Inc and Phenix Construction LLC) $168,200; Bob Tikker (Tikker Engineering) $163,600; Brent Regan (Regan Designs) $74,800;

 

On December 7, 2020 at the Idaho Freedom Foundation web site Wayne Hoffman published an article titled Media again resorts to fake news about PPP, IFF and allies. It also appeared on December 9, 2020 as a guest opinion at the Lewiston Tribune titled Turnabout: The facts show we’ve done nothing wrong. That article ends with the following sentence:

“We have done nothing wrong or inconsistent with our beliefs.”

 

But, of course, applying for and accepting 1% interest, special government loans is NOT being self-reliant (or following the free market), and inconsistent with previously stated beliefs.

 

Wayne rationalized his actions with weasel words under the following four headings (I added the numbers):

1] The PPP loan is a loan, not a ‘handout.’

2] Government compensation for economic loss is consistent with the principles of liberty.

3] IFF, its staff, and its critics also benefit financially from government financing.

4] The problem with government programs isn’t the recipients; it is the programs.

 

Under 1] he elaborated as follows:

“Taking out a loan was the only course of action to protect my organization and its employees in uncertain times. Furthermore, even though taking out a federally-backed loan gives me heartburn, I knew that the socialists we fight everyday wouldn’t have similar reservations and they’d use this moment to advance their awful policy ideas. We couldn’t let that happen.” 

 

But, no matter how you try to slice it, it still is baloney. I could not find a 2019 revenue statement for IFF. In 2018 IFF had revenue which totaled $806,862, so the $129,883 loan was about 16% of that.

 

The weasel and polecat images were adapted from one after page 352 of a 1908 book by William Carnegie titled Practical Game Preserving.  

UPDATE

Somehow I missed that the Coeur d'Alene Press also had an editorial on December 9, 2020 about IFF titled Gov handouts are evil -except when they're not.   

What are you doing in that recipe, and why are you doing it?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

When following a cookbook recipe, you may get stuck in a rut and just put your brain on hold. My wife and I enjoy watching the America’s Test Kitchen TV show. A couple years ago I bought her a 982-page 2017 hardcover book -  The Complete America’s Test Kitchen TV Show Cookbook. I’ve been reading it, and noticed some questionable things.  

 

Let’s look at shrimp. My first example is shrimp burgers, on page 572. Their recipe also appeared in an article on July 29, 2019 at the Associated Press titled How to make a moist, chunky shrimp burger without the mush. It calls for 1-1/2 pounds of extra-large shrimp (21 to 25 per pound), peeled, deveined, and patted dry. Then those shrimp are pulsed to chop them in a food processor. Why did they need to be the more expensive extra-large variety? Wouldn’t large or medium shrimp have worked just as well? There also is a YouTube video titled How to make crispy shrimp burgers. It does instead call for large shrimp (26 to 30 per pound). My second example is a recipe on pages 454 and 455 for Indonesian-Style Fried Rice which also is at their web site. It also calls for extra-large shrimp but then cuts them crosswise into thirds. Again, large shrimp cut in half would work (or whole medium shrimp).

 

Pages 632 and 633 of the cookbook have a recipe for poached eggs. Under WHY THIS RECIPE WORKS it claims:

 

“A touch of vinegar lowered the boiling point of the water so that we were able to cook the eggs over more gentle heat.”

 

But the actual recipe has you put the eggs into the pan of boiling water and then immediately remove the pan from the heat. Therefore the boiling point is irrelevant. An article by Robert Keyzers at the Victoria University of Wellington on November 28, 2019 titled Why do we add vinegar when we are poaching an egg? explains instead that vinegar makes the water more acidic and thus helps coagulate the egg white. Another article at The Splendid Table on April 5, 2017 titled Perfect poached eggs with America’s Test Kitchen agrees. It says that:

 

“We also tried vinegar, which is something that people have been doing for generations. The reason why it actually makes sense : it lowers the pH of the water, causing the egg whites to set at a lower temperature.”     

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There is a several decades-old story about blindly following a recipe from your grandmother for making a pot roast. She had called for cutting off both ends (shown above), so your mother also did that, and then so did you. An article at Snopes on November 9, 1999 titled Grandma’s cooking secret explains what went on. Grandma had to cut the ends off because she didn’t have a big enough pot to hold the original length of meat. A similar tale is told by Tom Jupile at the Chromatography Forum on November 21, 2005 in an article titled The original “grandma’s ham” story. Back on December 23, 2012 I blogged about Learning from two kinds of articles or books: recipes or mindless rules versus methods or ratios.

 

The image of a shrimp burger (from KFC in Vietnam back in 2007) came via Kham Tran at Wikimedia Commons.

 

Will there be a trade war with China over twist-ties?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

No, there will not. At BBC News on November 25, 2020 I heard a report that was described in an article titled US-China trade war: Trump gives one last twist. It was based on a press release on November 24, 2020 titled U. S. Department of Commerce issues affirmative preliminary countervailing duty determination for twist ties from China. They decided that the undervalued Chinese currency was subsidizing exports of that product, so a tariff of 122.5 percent should be imposed. Twist-tie producer Bedford Industries in Worthington, Minnesota had filed a petition. They claimed the amount of imported  twist-ties was $6.4 million in 2017, $6.89 million in 2018, and $4.15 million in 2019.

 

How much did twist ties contribute to the U.S. trade deficit with China in 2019? According to another article by Lucia Mutikani at Reuters on February 5, 2020 it was $345,600 million. 4.15 million divided by 345,600 million is 0.000012 or just 0.0012 percent.

 

There are two articles by Josh Zumbrum at the Wall Street Journal, one on October 11, 2020 titled U. S. China trade war gets wrapped up in twist-ties, and a second on November 25, 2020 titled U. S. puts tariffs on Chinese twist-ties.

 

What is missing here?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Yesterday Randall Munroe published an xkxd web cartoon (shown above) titled Contiguous 41 States. Most Americans immediately will say that’s wrong, there should be 48 of them. But the map superficially seems ok, and it’s surprisingly hard to tell what he left off. Actually he skipped the entire column with North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, and Kansas. He also slid over the adjacent states to eliminate Delaware, New Mexico and Pennsylvania.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

You can see what he did by comparing with the correct map shown above. Or you could cheat and look the cartoon up at Explain xkcd.

   

An article with a confusing opening paragraph

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

At The Ladders on December 2, 2020 there is an article by Sarah Dillon titled Harvard has the ultimate public speaking tip that you’ve never heard of. It opens with the following superfluous and confusing paragraph:

 

“Public speaking is statistically America’s number one phobia – second only to creepy bugs and frightening heights. I never imagined giving a presentation in front of your boss would be scarier than the potential of plummeting 10 stories to your death, but here we are.”

 

As shown above, it is hard to tell whether public speaking should be ranked first, second, or third.

 

Sarah’s article then discusses the article by Amit Goldberg and Erika Weisz at the Harvard Business Review on November 30, 2020 titled Don’t focus on the most expressive face in the audience. If you really want to understand that article, read their preprint rather than Sarah’s description of it.